Book 4: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

TITLE: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
AUTHOR: David Sedaris
STARTED: January 18, 2008
FINISHED: January 23, 2008
PAGES: 257
GENRE: Memoir

FIRST SENTENCE: When my family first moved to North Carolina, we lived in a rented house three blocks from the school where I would begin the third grade.

SUMMARY: [From barnesandnoble.com] In this phenomenal #1 bestseller, David Sedaris plays in the snow with his sisters. He goes on vacation with his family. He gets a job selling drinks. He attends his brother's wedding. He mops his sister's floor. He gives directions to a lost traveler. He eats a hamburger. He has his blood sugar tested. It all sounds so normal, doesn't it? Yet Sedaris lifts the corner of ordinary life, revealing the absurdity teeming below the surface, exposing a world alive with hidden motives and obscure desires.

THOUGHTS: I enjoyed this book. It is, however, difficult to expand said enjoyment into an actual discussion of the book. My book club met last night to talk about this read and the night was a series of "I like this" and "I thought this would be a little different." There wasn't so much a discussion of the text as a bullet pointing. In honor of that, I'm bullet pointing my thoughts:

• I liked it. Yeah! I did, however, think it would be funnier. The only other Sedaris work I've read is Holidays on Ice. That book had me cackling. This book, was equally as enjoyable, let me more amused than riotous.
• Sometimes the ancillary "characters" of the book were more interesting that Sedaris and his family.
• There were many times I wanted to know more about a certain point and/or situation in Sedaris' life. I wanted to more about he and Hugh, his relationship with his father, etc.
• It's refreshing to find a writer who seems to be completely honest about his own faults and flaws.

Foodie roomie mentioned after the meeting that she wondered if we would have looked at the emotion (namely the sad parts) of the book differently if it had been fiction. Good question, I say. And, I think I definately would have viewed the work differently. Knowing these events actually happened in Sedaris' life is what gives the text its momentum.

RATING: 6/10 [Good]